In Media Res
by Die Schildkroten
Summary: A surreal followup to the ending of Twilight Princess. Two decades later, Link returns to the Twilight. But something has happened.


It's been, I don't mind telling you, a more than usually surreal night. So I fought back by returning to the Twilight Princess universe to write a more than usually surreal one shot. I won't be staying long, more's the pity, but I suppose I haven't entirely lost my affection for the TP world or its characters.

This is Twilight Princess canon, remember. I thought I'd try it out.

Comments are like sleep; I crave them. Read on!

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In Media Res

Of course she went to him after it was all over, and of course she knew that the delay was damning, and of course she regretted it. But softly, softly; Twilight was built on regret, had its foundation on a single act of monumental treason. It was a brimming ladleful of tears, a cocktail of shame and remorse and something salty, something like grief. With another splash of sorrow something would give, and something would break, and all her world would come pouring out into the night.

Perhaps it would be a mercy. But Midna had never shown much of an appetite for mercy.

She found him, as she had known she would, in the throne room- abandoned to the rats these many years. The throne of Zant sat riven and ruined, and the usurper king, that old pufferfish, was nowhere to be found. But there was something of him in the defeated slump of his assassin's shoulders, the way his chin hung to his breastbone, the sprawl of his long legs- legs, she noted, run to stockiness in the years since their parting.

"Link?" she called, cautiously. The mannequin that someone had discarded on her throne did not move.

She came to him across the neglected floor, then, and savored the feeling of the ground beneath her feet, as she still did from time to time. The last time she had stood in this room she had been small, and plump, and her feet had not quite touched the ground. The last time she had stood in this room he had been with her, as he was now.

"Link?" she said again, kneeling to see his face. It was contorted, unreadable, glistening with tears.

Twenty year's time had given Link a paunch, a sac of fat under his chin that quivered as his chest heaved. It had given him bristling eyebrows and a whiskery scruff of blond beard shot through with gray. It had taken away his hero's greens and given him a bolt of patterned cloth tied around the waist with an emerald sash. But it had not taken away his sword, point braced against the smooth seat of the throne, hilt erect in the close, dusty air.

Midna eyed it. "Link," she said, touching his forehead, his bristling cheek, "what have they done to you? How did you find your way back?"

His hands rose from his lap and described a rectangle in the air- the old game.

"A door," said Midna, "a door from where?"

A fist with a thumb stuck out of it, jutting up at the ceiling.

"The mountains?" Minda said, and understood. "The city in the sky."

Imperceptible nod of his head.

"Link," she said, gently "I didn't want you to come back."

Stillness.

"I always-" she said, and stopped, and went on quietly. "I never meant to hurt you."

Stillness.

"But the Twilight-"

Imperceptible trembling of the hands.

"And how have you lived, since the Arbiter's Grounds?"

But she could have told that without his pantomime, known it from the callouses on the palm of his hand, the yellow of his nails, his gut. He had gone back to Ordon, hadn't he? The country boy made good had gone back to the country.

There was a ring on his third finger. "Ilia?"

The chin jerked up and down in affirmation.

Midna scowled. "I _never_ liked her."

His lips twisted into a smile and his shoulders leapt like fleas. He was laughing silently through the tears, his doughy face contorted into a wet grimace, his eyes squeezed shut and his lips twisted and his shoulders leaping. His hands rose into the air, palms down, and remained there, one three feet off the ground, one a little higher.

Despite herself she had to smile. "Oh, gods preserve me- kids? You have kids? Oh, the poor darling brats. I'll bet you beat them."

A sound, chuffing and damp. Was he laughing? He was pointing at something- at her?

When she saw where his blunt index finger was aimed she slapped his hand down and folded her arms tight over her chest, blushing as much as someone with her coloration could blush. "Lecher," she snarled, but she was grinning. She had missed him- missed _this_. "Girls, then?"

The tortured face rose and fell a little. This time he was pointing at her face.

"Me?" she said, in surprise, then caught on. "Well, you never were so bright. Don't you know that's an unlucky name?" There was something a little wistful in her voice. "Do they take after you?"

The shoulders shrugged. The clammy fingers folded over her hand and she squeezed them, and felt a pang in her chest that she had not felt in twenty years.

"It couldn't have worked out," she said, gently. "You always did belong to your world more than I belonged to mine. The wolf I loved died when the Twilight left Hyrule. Link, lover, you shouldn't have come back."

He shrugged again, and his free hand described a little spiral that meant _I never left_.

"Do you love her?"

He was still for a long moment and then, reluctantly, almost involuntarily, the streaked face nodded up and down.

The pang, again, sharp and sleek as a needle through the heart. Damn the pang, and where had it been all these shadowy years?

"You shouldn't have come," she said, again. "Link, go home. She's waiting for you, didn't you know?" And I'm just another old spinster pining after the hero of legends. Didn't you know that? And I'm just another virgin queen. "Go back to her."

Lines of effort sliced into his face as he bent forward, almost double, and achieved his feet. She was still taller than him; she had forgotten how good that felt.

"Stand up straight," she said, "so I can get a look at you." Link obliged. Erect, the stoutness that had gradually overtaken him made him look not soft but solid, solid in a way that he had not been as a muscular young blade from the hinterlands, solid in the way that Ganondorf had been solid. There was still a sharp light in his eyes. His hands were still made for the sword. Fat old wolf! But he had teeth and claws yet. He still had that old hunger.

And it was hard, of course it was hard, it was always hard. But it had been harder the first time. The second betrayal never cut so deep. After the first death-

"I love you," she said, "I always loved you, I'll always love you. It's enough. Please gods, it's enough. And now you have to go home. You can't-"

A little bit closer, and a little bit closer, and she fell on him, her mouth over his, her hands between the blades of his shoulders, at the small of her back. The salt of his tongue. His breath, tropical, redolent with his secret spice. His head, bent back for hers, hair shaggy and golden and gray.

It wasn't enough. It never would be. But it would have to do.

She broke first, and smiled, a little timidly. "We've gotten old, wolf," she said. "Who'd have thunk?"

The corners of his mouth twitched up, and that, too, would have to do.

Midna sighed. "We should have let them win, I suppose. Hindsight's the national sport in these parts, you know. History- who cares about it? My people would rather think about what might have been than what was. Not that you can blame them, given the sort of history we have to work with."

Finally, a new expression- doubt. She laughed at him.

"Not that you could have stood down, of course. Oh, Link, you always were so deliciously predictable."

His grin hadn't changed much. Eyebrows rose, eyes opened wide, posing the question. She shook her head, half smiling despite herself.

"You can't stay here," she said, and he sighed a long rattling sigh. His shrug spoke of a deep and penetrating resignation.

"Link, I-" she said, and stopped. "See you later."

Oh, but he smiled at that. Smiled and adjusted his sword and bowed, low and courtly, with a dignity he could never have managed when he was her hero. Midna returned the favor with a curtsy, legs crossed at the ankle, and watched him as he slipped through the doors.

And backed through them in a martial stance, the bright tongue of his sword flicking here, flicking there. Two Twilight wardens menacing him, the light glittering off their tall helmets, the poison a dull shine on the points of their long spears. Somewhere somewhere else the doom bell was ringing, a low urgent clatter to rouse the myrmidons of Twilight. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.

"Majesty," barked the senior warden, "permission to take the lightworlder into custody!"

"He is my honored guest," Midna shot back coldly, "and a knight of the Twilight. On what grounds would you molest him?"

The wardens exchanged terrified glances.

"Majesty," began the younger, "gates between the two worlds, while rare, have a reputation for stability, owing to the ofttimes disastrous nature of dimensional schism and the attendant risk of-"

"Majesty," broke off the senior, grimly, "the Ooccoo Mirror has been broken by parties unknown. The backlash severely damaged the Palace District, with partial or complete groundfall in three districts and casualties numbering in the-"

"You," she said, wheeling on him, "you did this, didn't you? Who are you working with? Who sent you? Tell me!" But his eyes were stricken, his hands was shaking; he didn't know anything and he never had.

"-floatship to the Gloaming totally destroyed, swallowed up by the rift. Communications have yet to be re-established; we fear the worst. The fault-"

Midna stormed to the window and looked out over her afflicted kingdom and saw that all that the warden had said was true. There were fires burning out of control in the throne city of the Twilight, riots marching up and down those stately, well-planned boulevards; as she watched one floating island shivered violently and dropped out of the infinite sky before the screams had time to reach her. Partial or complete landfall; breaking any connection had consequences. There had still been people on the floating island.

She could hear Link killing the wardens behind her, hear the ministers storming the stairs to the throne room, but it did not occur to her to be afraid. The damage, although extensive, would be contained. Connections to the Gloaming would be restored. Order would prevail as it always would, as it always had, at the marvelously dextrous hands of the House of Mid.

But as her people dropped screaming out of the world it occurred to her that there was a larger tragedy occurring here, on the periphery of thought; a tragedy that had trapped her and Link together in the sullen Twilight, a tragedy that had broken the last link between the two reflecting worlds. She thought of Ordon, and the time she had spent there; she thought, briefly, of the city in the sky. Her own city was hysterical; no matter, it would be made sane again. Had it not always been so?

The mirror is broken, thought Midna. We are alone.


End file.
